“You have the dresser of a murderous transvestite,” a friend told me a couple years ago, and while I knew why he said ‘transvestite’ (we’d just discussed one), I was less clear on the ‘homicidal’ part; maybe it was a nod to our love of Brian De Palma and Angie Dickinson, or maybe it was because several types of lotion sat atop mine.*
We were comparing it to Crankenstein’s, which was difficult to dust because it was so cluttered with candles, jewelry, lotion, perfume, and other odds and ends. Having separate spaces was an amazing luxury because the two of us shared one four-drawer dresser for several years. It was a Felix Unger/Oscar Madison situation but we were pressed for room; that she was rarely home for long helped to contain some of the madness.
Crankenstein, who is highly distractible and innately suspicious of organization, rejects the very concept of folded clothes; as a bachelor she tossed hers into an ever-expanding pile on the floor. “An exaggeration,” you might think, but she’ll throw her head back and laugh like a cartoon villain when she reads this because it’s true. Since snagging yours truly as her doting trophy wife (the laughter continues), her only laundry responsibility has been to wear it.** And wear it she does, sometimes 12 outfits per day. I’d go so far as to say she has ‘pondering clothes,’ articles of clothing donned only for short periods while choosing what to dirty next.
It’s a sick and twisted cat-and-mouse game, and not even a sexy one; I do so much of her laundry each week that I want her to remain clothed. When she returns home to freshly laundered clothes neatly arranged in her dresser drawers, I know there’s a part of her that thinks “This is so painfully stupid and provincial. Let my pants venture forth into the world and choose their own path, riding the rails and living by their wits.” Sometimes she smiles ruefully and admits as much. She’s too polite to say “How I long to strangle you with culottes and pantyhose…” aloud, but surely she’s fantasized about it.
Immediately upon discovering a tidy dresser, she requires a change of clothes. That gives her an opportunity to ransack each drawer until it’s too messy to close — even the bottom one that only contains seasonally-inappropriate sweaters. Once (dis)order has been restored to the land, she thanks me for doing the laundry and steps forward for a kiss. If I died tomorrow, I know her clothes would be strewn all over the house by Sunday — something that sounds more benign than it is. Within weeks she’d buy a new wardrobe rather than wash the old one, a process she’d repeat until the floors were covered in abandoned laundry; dirty paper plates and plastic forks would likewise overrun the kitchen once the ‘good’ plates were soiled.
When we question the future of our relationship, we’re usually focused on the same issues we’ve had from the start. YOPD, which brought us closer together in many ways, has expanded some of those fissures. The one I’ve found hardest to ignore is the belief — I wouldn’t even call it a ‘fear’ — that once I’m no longer able to counterbalance Crankenstein’s nature, her life will become as chaotic as it was before we met. That’s a normal, common thought for someone in my position to have. But on some level I’m not even concerned about her, which is unusual for me; instead, I’m sad for myself.
Sad, I guess, and angry — angry for accepting so many things that made me uncomfortable to begin with, things that feel increasingly untenable these days. If I died tomorrow or ended up in assisted living prematurely, I know the dresser would be the least of her problems. Crankenstein’s messiness is not mere messiness, it’s something deeper and harder to address. It would quickly spiral out of control, and I know she wouldn’t hire a cleaner or accept help from friends.
Worst of all, “hood rat behavior,” as we call the eating disorder, would tempt her. She’d want to starve herself or purge, hating every moment of it while wryly singing “Hello, darkness, my old friend.” She’d drink too much and resume smoking, and she wouldn’t open bills or check bank statements or take care of the house. That, too, probably sounds like an exaggeration, but she would be the first to tell you she could easily earn millions of dollars throughout the course of a long career and end up homeless after letting a property fall into disrepair, or failing to verify its mortgage and taxes were paid.
At the risk of sounding supremely dramatic, it makes me feel utterly hopeless. She recognizes some of these things about herself and makes a lot of charming, hilarious jokes about it… but she’d still allow it to happen. Loving someone like that, and consistently doing more for her than she would ever do for you or herself, takes a lot out of you even in the best of times. During tougher stretches, you might feel like you’re drowning. I’ve done enough of that these last few years to question whether I betrayed myself by ever tolerating a dynamic this lopsided in the first place.
If I rattled off even a short list of some of the most bewildering things Crankenstein won’t do for herself, she’d be embarrassed; that tells me all I need to know about her effort, even if she didn’t also make the occasional joke about her weaponized incompetence. I think she justifies abdicating some of these responsibilities by convincing herself that despite my complaints, the physical act of caring for her brings me some amount of satisfaction or pleasure. Alas, I’m not that selfless.
It is mostly for selfish reasons that I impose order on our lives. I want things to be safe, reliable, clean and organized; that’s what makes me happy. It’s upsetting to think I’ve devoted these last 10 years of my life, maybe the last 10 ‘good’ years I’ll ever have, to building a dream Crankenstein never really shared. If we’d ever truly been on the same page about any of this, I wouldn’t be so confident that once I’m gone — either mentally or physically — all our work will be undone in the blink of an eye.
“I’m not putting you in a nursing home,” she says flatly during conversations about this, as if that solves the problem. But the only thing worse than living apart from her while knowing what’s happening at home would be having a front-row seat to it here while confined to a bed in some far corner of the house. I don’t know how to make peace with this and am not sure it’s something I should strive to accept, anyway.^
* Mine looked like this and still mostly does today, minus the bath products and Humira injectors. The dresser is not my cup of tea but it was free; it’s a hand-me-down from the Grandma Suite set.
** Let’s play Barbara Walters for a moment and consider the question “If you were a trophy, what kind of trophy would you be?” You might be an Oscar, an Edgar, a Hugo, a Razzie (hopefully no one’s a Darwin Award); I suspect I’m a cheap bowling trophy, tarnished and missing a ball, or maybe a perfect attendance certificate with a prominent misspelling.
^ One thing I don’t want to hear is “You’re overthinking this,” because I’m not; the only person who knows Crankenstein’s depression better than me is Crankenstein herself. And hiring a cleaner, the simplest Band-Aid solution, isn’t currently an option with ‘Niles’ running amok.